Q&A: A Question About the Categorical Imperative
A Question About the Categorical Imperative
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I wanted to ask a short question about Kant’s categorical imperative.
Seemingly, the imperative is supposed to obligate a person to act only according to a maxim that he would want to become a universal law. But it seems to me that it is always possible to formulate my action in a particularized way, such that I actually would want it to become a universal rule — and then the imperative loses its binding force.
For example: suppose a small child asks what happened to his father who died, and I answer, “He traveled far away,” מתוך a genuine desire to protect him emotionally until he grows up and can contain the truth. If I formulate this as a maxim — “Every person should lie to small children in order to protect them in traumatic situations” — that actually sounds like a worthy universal rule, not one that contains a contradiction.
So what exactly prevents a person, in good faith, from formulating almost any action in a way that passes the categorical imperative? Does the imperative have some internal mechanism that prevents this kind of interpretation?
Thanks in advance!
Answer
No. That is one of the common criticisms of the imperative. If there is a relevant criterion, then you really can qualify the criterion the way you demonstrated. But it has to be a relevant distinction. You can’t say that it is permitted to lie if your name starts with M (Michael). Kant took this too far because of such concerns, and he argues that it is forbidden to lie in any case, even under threat to life. Absurd.
Discussion on Answer
The imperative can restrict unworthy behaviors. Why should it restrict worthy behavior? See column 122 and the references there for examples of implications of the imperative for which, in my opinion, there is no indirect way around it.
Thanks for the answer.
It just seems to me that maybe I didn’t explain my point properly.
My concern is not that every criterion can justify an exception to the imperative (like a name that starts with M, etc.), but that for every situation one can find a criterion that does seem relevant — and then in practice it is always possible to formulate the action so that it passes the categorical imperative.
And this is not a sophistical trick, but דווקא in good faith: a person really can believe, without self-deception, that his lie in a particular case really is fit to become a norm in situations of that kind (like lying to a small child in order to protect him psychologically).
And if that is so, then the imperative basically does not succeed in restricting anything in practice, but only covers for what we already made a substantive moral decision about.
So my question is: can the categorical imperative really decide moral situations, or is it only a formal structure that says what we have already decided on the basis of other values?